When the revolution that has changed the social and political state
of an aristocratic people begins to penetrate into literature, ii generally
first manifests itself in the drama, and it always remains conspicuous
there.

The spectator of a dramatic piece is, to a certain extent, taken by
surprise by the impression it conveys. He has no time to refer to his memory
or to consult those more able to judge than himself. It does not occur
to him to resist the new literary tendencies that begin to be felt by him;
he yields to them before he knows what they are.

Authors are very prompt in discovering which way the taste of the public
is thus secretly inclined. They shape their productions accordingly; and
the literature of the stage, after having served to indicate the approaching
literary revolution, speedily completes it altogether. If you would judge
beforehand of the literature of a people that is lapsing into democracy,
study its dramatic productions.

The literature of the stage, moreover, even among aristocratic nations,
constitutes the most democratic part of their literature. No kind of literary
gratification is so much within the reach of the multitude as that which
is derived from theatrical representations. Neither preparation nor study
is required to enjoy them; they lay hold on you in the midst of your prejudices
and your ignorance. When the yet untutored love of the pleasures of mind
begins to affect a class of the community, it immediately draws them to
the stage. The theaters of aristocratic nations have always been filled
with spectators not belonging to the aristocracy. At the theater alone,
the higher ranks mix with the middle and the lower classes; there alone
do the former consent to listen to the opinion of the latter, or at least
to allow them to give an opinion at all. At the theater men of cultivation
and of literary attainments have always had more difficulty than elsewhere
in making their taste prevail over that of the people and in preventing
themselves from being carried away by the latter. The pit has frequently
made laws for the boxes.

If it be difficult for an aristocracy to prevent the people from getting
the upper hand in the theater, it will readily be understood that the people
will be supreme there when democratic principles have crept into the laws
and customs, when ranks are intermixed, when minds as well as fortunes
are brought more nearly together, and when the upper class has lost, with
its hereditary wealth, its power, its traditions, and its leisure. The
tastes and propensities natural to democratic nations in respect to literature
will therefore first be discernible in the drama, and it may be foreseen
that they will break out there with vehemence. In written productions the
literary canons of aristocracy will be gently, gradually, and, so to speak,
legally modified; at the theater they will be riotously overthrown.

The drama brings out most of the good qualities and almost all the defects
inherent in democratic literature. Democratic communities hold erudition
very cheap and care but little for what occurred at Rome and Athens; they
want to hear something that concerns themselves, and the delineation of
the present age is what they demand. When the heroes and the manners of
antiquity are frequently brought upon the stage and dramatic authors faithfully
observe the rules of antiquated precedent, that is enough to warrant a
conclusion that the democratic classes have not yet got the upper hand
in the theaters.

Racine makes a very humble apology in the preface to the Britannicus
for having disposed of Junia among the Vestals, who, according to Aulus
Gellius, he says, "admitted no one below six years of age, nor above
ten." We may be sure that he would neither have accused nor defended
himself for such an offense if he had written for our contemporaries.

A fact of this kind illustrates not only the state of literature at
the time when it occurred, but also that of society itself. A democratic
stage does not prove that the nation is in a state of democracy, for, as
we have just seen, it may happen even in aristocracies that democratic
tastes affect the drama; but when the spirit of aristocracy reigns exclusively
on the stage, the fact irrefragably demonstrates that the whole of society
is aristocratic; and it may be boldly inferred that the same lettered and
learned class that sways the dramatic writers commands the people and governs
the country.

The refined tastes and the arrogant bearing of an aristocracy, when
it manages the stage, will rarely fail to lead it to make a kind of selection
in human nature. Some of the conditions of society claim its chief interest,
and the scenes that delineate their manners are preferred upon the stage.
Certain virtues, and even certain vices, are thought more particularly
to deserve to figure there; and they are applauded while all others are
excluded. On the stage, as well as elsewhere, an aristocratic audience
wishes to meet only persons of quality and to be moved only by the misfortunes
of kings. The same remark applies to style: an aristocracy is apt to impose
upon dramatic authors certain modes of expression that give the key in
which everything is to be delivered. By these means the stage frequently
comes to delineate only one side of man, or sometimes even to represent
what is not to be met with in human nature at all, to rise above nature
and to go beyond it.

In democratic communities the spectators have no such preferences, and
they rarely display any such antipathies: they like to see on the stage
that medley of conditions, feelings, and opinions that occurs before their
eyes. The drama becomes more striking, more vulgar, and more true. Sometimes,
however, those who write for the stage in democracies also transgress the
bounds of human nature; but it is on a different side from their predecessors.
By seeking to represent in minute detail the little singularities of the
present moment and the peculiar characteristics of certain personages,
they forget to portray the general features of the race.

When the democratic classes rule the stage, they introduce as much license
in the manner of treating subjects as in the choice of them. As the love
of the drama is, of all literary tastes, that which is most natural to
democratic nations, the number of authors and of spectators, as well as
of theatrical representations, is constantly increasing among these communities.
Such a multitude, composed of elements so different and scattered in so
many different places. cannot acknowledge the same rules or submit to the
same laws. No agreement is possible among judges so numerous, who do not
know when they may meet again, and therefore each pronounces his own separate
opinion on the piece. If the effect of democracy is generally to question
the authority of all literary rules and conventions, on the stage it abolishes
them altogether and puts in their place nothing but the caprice of each
author and each public.

The drama also displays in a special manner the truth of what I have
before said in speaking more generally of style and art in democratic literature.
In reading the criticisms that were occasioned by the dramatic productions
of the age of Louis XIV one is surprised to notice the great stress which
the public laid on the probability of the plot, and the importance that
was attached to the perfect consistency of the characters and to their
doing nothing that could not be easily explained and understood. The value
which was set upon the forms of language at that period, and the paltry
strife about words with which dramatic authors were assailed, are no less
surprising. It would seem that the men of the age of Louis XIV attached
very exaggerated importance to those details which may be perceived in
the study, but which escape attention on the stage; for, after all, the
principal object of a dramatic piece is to be performed, and its chief
merit is to affect the audience. But the audience and the readers in that
age were the same: on leaving the theater they called up the author for
judgment at their own firesides.

In democracies dramatic pieces are listened to, but not read. Most of
those who frequent the amusements of the stage do not go there to seek
the pleasures of mind, but the keen emotions of the heart. They do not
expect to hear a fine literary work, but to see a play; and provided the
author writes the language of his country correctly enough to be understood,
and his characters excite curiosity and awaken sympathy, the audience are
satisfied. They ask no more of fiction and immediately return to real life.
Accuracy of style is therefore less required, because the attentive observance
of its rules is less perceptible on the stage.

As for the probability of the plot, it is incompatible with perpetual
novelty, surprise, and rapidity of invention. It is therefore neglected,
and the public excuses the neglect. You may be sure that if you succeed
in bringing your audience into the presence of something that affects them,
they will not care by what road you brought them there, and they will never
reproach you for having excited their emotions in spite of dramatic rules.

The Americans, when they go to the theater, very broadly display all
the different propensities that I have here described; but it must be acknowledged
that as yet very few of them go to the theater at all. Although playgoers
and plays have prodigiously increased in the United States in the last
forty years, the population indulge in this kind of amusement only with
the greatest reserve. This is attributable to peculiar causes, which the
reader is already acquainted with and of which a few words will suffice
to remind him.

The Puritans who founded the American republics not only were enemies
to amusements, but they professed an especial abhorrence for the stage.
They considered it as an abominable pastime; and as long as their principles
prevailed with undivided sway, scenic performances were wholly unknown
among them. These opinions of the first fathers of the colonies have left
very deep traces on the minds of their descendants.

The extreme regularity of habits and the great strictness of morals
that are observable in the United States have as yet little favored the
growth of dramatic art. There are no dramatic subjects in a country which
has witnessed no great political catastrophes and in which love invariably
leads by a straight and easy road to matrimony. People who spend every
day in the week in making money, and Sunday in going to church, have nothing
to invite the Muse of Comedy.

A single fact suffices to show that the stage is not very popular in
the United States. The Americans, whose laws allow of the utmost freedom,
and even license of language in all other respects, have nevertheless subjected
their dramatic authors to a sort of censorship. Theatrical performances
can take place only by permission of the municipal authorities. This may
serve to show how much communities are like individuals; they surrender
themselves unscrupulously to their ruling passions and afterwards take
the greatest care not to yield too much to the vehemence of tastes that
they do not possess.

No portion of literature is connected by closer or more numerous ties
with the present condition of society than the drama. The drama of one
period can never be suited to the following age if in the interval an important
revolution has affected the manners and laws of the nation.

The great authors of a preceding age may be read, but pieces written
for a different public will not attract an audience. The dramatic authors
of the past live only in books. The traditional taste of certain individuals,
vanity, fashion, or the genius of an actor may sustain or resuscitate for
a time the aristocratic drama among a democracy; but it will speedily fall
away of itself, not overthrown, but abandoned.